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Mark Zuckerberg puts cryptocurrencies on his radar for 2018

05 January 2018 - 08:32
Dave Liedtka

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during a town hall with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Facebook's headquarters in California. Facebook, whose value lies in nontangibles, is one of the most powerful brands in the world. Picture: REUTERS

New York — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave cryptocurrency enthusiasts a little optimism for the new year.

Zuckerberg referenced cryptocurrencies in a posting on Thursday in which he laid out how he will spend 2018 trying to correct persistent problems — including the proliferation of hate speech and misinformation — that have dogged his wildly popular social network for the past two years.

"There are important counter-trends to this — encryption and cryptocurrency — that take power from centralised systems and put it back into people’s hands," Zuckerberg wrote.

"But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I’m interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services."

Zuckerberg is not the only Facebook executive expressing interest in the space.

David Marcus, the company’s vice-president of messaging products, joined the board of Coinbase, one of the largest crypto exchanges, late last year.

"I’ve been involved with, and fascinated by, cryptocurrencies since 2012, and I’ve witnessed how Coinbase has started democratising access to this new asset class," Marcus said on Coinbase’s blog on December 12.

What all this may mean for the digital currency world remains to be seen.